Out This Week 1/5

Not much at all hitting stores this week, according to Largehearted Boy’s list, so this is a particularly good time to focus on a couple of bands that you’ll hopefully see more of in the upcoming year and who are bold enough to shove their way past the others to be first through the door in 2010.

Nashville brothers JEFF the Brotherhood are a drum and guitar duo who don’t sound like any other drum and guitar duo you’ve heard before… most of the time. Jake and Jamin Orrall crush punk, metal, surf, garage, and psych rock into a dense package, and although Weezer isn’t the best comparison, the duo lay enough pop hooks atop crunchy rhythms that your mind’s gonna go there anyway, as in, why doesn’t Weezer make songs this good anymore? That is, until the psychedelia takes hold and you’re off to a different realm.

Brooklyn trio The Octagon share JEFF’s punk tendencies but eschew the layered psych for purposefully lo-fi raw intensity. Unlike certain young lo-fi punker upstarts, the members of The Octagon are accomplished musicians of their own right (drummer Will Glass, for example, has performed with sound sticklers Dirty Projectors), and they never let the limitations of their 4-track cassette recorders hinder their punchy melodies. Most songs punch out at less than three minutes, and there’s enough variety here to ever keep you from feeling bored.

Beyond those two, you might want to check out the latest from folky-turned-crooner Findlay Brown or even Kanye West‘s concert from VH1 Storytellers if you’re so inclined. For you audiophiles and collectors are a boatload of vinyl issues, mostly of the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson, but the Spacemen 3 reissues should seem particularly enticing.

Findlay Brown – Holding Back the Night (MP3)
from Love Will Find You on Verve Forecast